the most favourable from a component layout and ease of manufacture point of view was to put a large, flat battery under the keyboard

There is also a (smaller) supercap(acitor) under the display.

the removal of the battery from under the display has opened up space to use a supercap to assist the battery

Keys are compressed when Gemini PDA is closed :

We hatched an audacious plan to squash the keys when the device was shut, saving 1.4mm in thickness. This is done with magnets on the corners which compress the keys and hold the lid and keyboard frame together.

"I am very exited about this product, but my excitement is tempered by two things:
- Your CEO is affiliated with another Indiegogo project, the ZX Spectrum Vega Plus project, which has not been delivered to date, what is his role in that project? [...]"

Essentially they summarize the bad state of the project.
Long overdue, lack of communication.

They add their correspondence with the company, which did not go well:

"Our clients are concerned that the BBC is in fact supporting and participating in a malicious campaign intended to denigrate our clients' reputation," wrote lawyers Michelmores LLP in a letter to the broadcaster.

Golem rephrased this into
"With threat of legal action the company tried to prevent press releases about the project"
Which is kinda over the top and wrong in my eyes. But they certainly haven't got a thick skin.

Anyway it seems they either are totally overwhelmed with the scale of the project or they decided to run with the money or they tried, didn't hit their deadline and after the response from their backers decided "Na they don't deserve it anyway"

I suggest again to stay away from funding the Gemini if this connection is there and wait for a final product.

This is just yet another ARM device built for Android and built with planned obsolescence. The screenshot shows it's running Linux 3.18 which is the kernel used in Android 6 and is now EOL. If you're lucky they'll move to Linux 4.4 from Android 7 which is scheduled to be EOL'd in less than a year.

On the Linux side, we are actively discussing with several companies including Canonical (Ubuntu), Jolla (Sailfish OS), Mediatek and others on how we can achieve a truly open Linux environment.

This made me LOL, particularly the Mediatek part. That statement alone tells me they have little experience in this area. Ubuntu and Sailfish ports will likely use the Android kernel with libhybris like all of their other ports to mobile devices. You can forget a truly open Linux environment.

The identified device manufacturer already has a Mediatek license and has committed to letting us alter the firmware so that we can properly support our keyboard, multiple languages and alphabets. They have also committed to supporting an optional application bar such as the one below the screen on the old Psion devices. This will be an option so that backers who do not want this, can disable it in the settings. The version of Android used on the device will be Android 7.

ii) Linux

We have taken on board all backer comments regarding the flavour options of Linux. There were many comments and essentially we understand the main requests for the platform to be as open as possible so that backers are free to install whatever Linux distribution they want.

We are definitely going in this direction and the plan is to develop as many Linux drivers for the device in the time available to support a variety of distros. The key device drivers that we will need are of course the screen, keyboard, memory management, battery management, WiFi and we have a commitment with our manufacturing partners’ design house to enable us to do this. This is great news as this was an unclear point when we launched the campaign.

iii) Sailfish

We have still not made a formal decision on Sailfish as OS. Partly because we narrowly missed meeting some key management of Jolla in Hong Kong due to conflicting schedules on both sides. We plan to meet Jolla soon for further discussions.

We hope this is an exciting update on the specifications of Gemini for you. From now on the sourcing department of our chosen Far Eastern design house will be identifying the final components for Gemini’s bill of materials.

My opinion :
- Gemini PDA hardware will be released, with a great (made in UK) mechanical keyboard;
- Android 7 will work;
- Linux release is the great risk, as developing drivers is not cheap and fast, so I expect delays and not 100% ready Linux release (lacking some drivers).